Dyslexic Thinking

In my previous post I discussed about how I observe the world. In this post I will discuss how it has affected my thinking process.

Despite all the problems, Dyslexia has forced on me a thinking process different & better than others.

Dyslexia gives you very high power of imagination with speed. You can imagine things simultaneously like a movie scene while listening, reading. There is another side brain running on back of your mind. You would be having multiple interpretations/possibilities on it while listening and reading which tapers down while reading. But leaves you with impulse of thirst for unanswered questions and curiosity to find answers.

While building system and solutions I could actually visualise it as people talking to each other, exchanging handshakes, sharing their possessions with others, and a simultaneous Group Discussions going in same room.

Its easy to imagine multiple things moving and interacting simultaneously, and imagine more than 3D. I found it out while preparing for engineering entrances in class 11–12 when we were given physics problems to solve. I was able to visualise the complete flow and movement of mechanics, optics, electron movement inside atom with duality. I built a habit of solving physics problems without picking pen & paper in time earlier than other top students using pen & paper while studying Halliday Resnick Walker and solving Irodov questions. Since it was so exciting in visualising the rotation with motion of objects in mind doing the calculations simultaneously. I still miss those days.

Though Organic Chemistry was too tough for me since it involved memorising things without much understanding. Also with Dyslexia you have issues with ordering was I was always confused with reactions ordering to reach final state. I worked intense hard in Organic but it didn’t work out. In organic chemistry all molecules looked like multiple balloons on both sides of plate and all looked similar blended with black & white footballs of different sizes put together. It didn’t happen in physics since I was able to find the link between motion transitions in order.

Maths was also good specially the geometry part. I had a little fight with algebra since I was not able to differentiate between 2 and ². But I changed my handwriting increasing characters height to differentiate the same. It solved out my many other problems too. I now also had a clear demarkation between small letters and capital letters, small letters from digits and my favourite one x from×. Which we always used in linear algebra. I made x variable small and × as covering full height same for 2 and ².

Dyslexia also blesses you with clubbing problems and building a common solution. You can easily see the similarity in problems. This is inside. When you understand a problem you will visualise it. The flow thats the issue. You then find same pattern in other problems. You are able to easily find pattern similarity in problems and reach points where solutions could diverge from similarity.

You are able to break problems into small pieces and group those similar pieces again for same solution and distill down to set of small distinct problems.

You can easily apply the same solution to a different set of problems. How you determine that? When you are building a solution you visualise a solution flow. You then recall that you have already built a solution which had same flow and solution pattern but was meant for altogether different problem. Hence the same solution can be reused here also.

You are also able to break solutions to small solution building modules and can easily join them together. Those small modules are solutions to some other small problems you are solving along the way.

You are able to determine the same solution would also be solving multiple other problems along the path which was not in main problem statement. You also solve other problems along the way for future. You build a solution toolkit for future for yourself which is churned out in the process of making solutions.

With duality you are equally biased of outcomes since you know the other possibilities. You by default is forced to think of other possibilities.

Life is full of errors at every moment. If I’m building anything I need to ensure that its stable against those errors. How do I get those errors? Thanks to Dyslexia I face all those obstacles/issues while building that solution.

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With dyslexia you have to fight a lot with yourself at every instant. This practiced over years builds some good habits:

1. Never giving up, Keep fighting
2. More focus and easily set very high concentration in task.
3. Life is full of errors at every instant and a part of life.
4. Never have overconfidence you will always have some errors.
5. Make things simple. have clear distinction. Remove ambiguity.
6. Whatever you build will be tested over time again and again by errors and duality. Build to handle errors.
7. Everything has dual meaning and sometimes multiple. Think again or ask.
8. Meaning changes with context & time. Validate your meaning.
9. Ensure your direction, you might be on wrong path for same problem (Duality).
10. Keep everything well managed & organised, clutter-free have least headache. Have minimum maintenance & cost in life for everything.
11. Report the errors, don’t suppress/hide them else face the wrath of it compounded.
12. Never assume anything.

Dyslexia kills your confidence in beginning, it demands for hard work and consistency and then builds an unshakeable strong confidence with speed and accuracy over the subject in small time since you have already fought much over it which is called experience which is gained in small time as compared to others.

In short your experience is fast tracked.

I will share how this has helped me in building my own way of programming style in my next post “Dyslexic Programming”